Chevy Volt

I just purchased a 2012 Volt. I am 54, have owned 15 cars, and this is the best bar none. Got the car for invoice, 0% financing, $7,500 Fed tax credit, $2,000 state tax credit. My round trip to work is 52 miles, and I make it every time on battery. The car drives like a dream.

You need to buy the 240 volt charging cord from Chevy. Then you need to hire an electrician to run a 240 volt line to your garage, it's the same type of connector as an ecectric dryer. Most important, you need breaker space n your panelboard.

In San Diego people are getting a permanent charging station with separate meter. The cost is a lot less for charging at night that way. Here are the charging options for the Volt. Or you can just charge with 110 volt from a standard outlet.

I just use the 110V charger for 10 hr overnight charging (9pm to 7am). I even installed one more for the Focus Electric that I am getting. For the FFE it will take 20hrs for the full charge but I will mostly drive 25 miles everyday and as long as overnight charge gives me 40 miles I am good to go. You can get one from shopchevyparts.com for $380 shipped. This is currently the cheapest home charging option. Each 110V charger should be on a separate breaker with minimum 15A rating.

The problem with that is getting your EV electric rate in some places. SDG&E offers a very low overnight charging rate from midnite to 5 AM, for EVs. You have to have a separate meter installed and tied into a charging device. So it would need to be a 220 volt charger to fully charge in 5 hours or less.

That is true. In my case I have Solar. So it is all free now. I do not worry about electric rates and times at home anymore. This year since I was late in buying the EVs, and the solar was already sized to support them, I have a massive surplus. PG&E should give me 100s back in October.

We are not so lucky with SDG&E. We lose whatever extra is stored each year. So building a solar system to just fill your need is the key to success. Do you think you will like the Focus EV as well as the Leaf. I talked to a very happy camper with a Leaf. Not to mention the $7500 federal and $5000 state. Very tempting. I read the Focus used up too much trunk for batteries. The Leaf is quite roomy. Though I don't really need a commuter type car being retired. Good luck, it sounds like you are set to beat the oil companies out of any of your cash. :blush:

Actually what you said was true till 2010. After that under state law they have to pay for excess power generated. However, they will pay wholesale rates which is usually 4-5c/Kwh and much lower than what they charge their customers.

Actually I was considering the Leaf until the FFE came to the market. The Leaf is now 4K cheaper (market price) and is a better deal, however I am repulsed by the styling of the Leaf - Ugh those headlights are hideous. . The FFE looks great.

The FFE is in real short supply - Ford still does not seem as serious as Nissan in selling EVs. I may yet get the Leaf if I cannot get the FFE - who knows. The trunk is not an issue as this will be a commuting car. I will keep my Highlander Hybrid for the 1 or 2 vacations/long drives each year. Those 100 odd gallons will be all the business that the gas companies can get from me

I agree the Nissan Leaf is butt ugly. The FFE is much better looking and hopefully most of the tax credit stays in the USA. So how many $7500 tax credits can you get? Say if I wanted to start a local taxi service. :shades:

Wow! 52 miles round-trip, all on battery without any assist from the on-board engine?

Isn't that almost double what GM says the car will do on battery?

My wife is looking at the possibility of a Volt in the next 12-18 months, and since the Chevy dealership is only about 1-2 miles out of he way, we plan to do a test drive from the dealership to her work, then home and back to the dealership, which is about 28 miles total round-trip.

My previous post said 52 miles, just rechecked and its a 46 mile round trip. I make it about a third of the time, and the rest, the engine starts about 2 miles from home. And thats in the heat with the A/C on, and I drive fairly aggressively. I am a mechanical engineer, and did a lot of research. This car is an engineering marvel. Go to the Volt web site, and depending on what state you are in there are additional incentives. I live in MD and get a state tax credit of $2,000 on top of the $7,500 fed tax credit.

New owner just one week, 293 miles and used .01 gal of gas. Fun to drive. Used $7.70 in electricy so far. That will go in half after Offpeak elect is installed this week. Drive mostly under 50 miles a day, but can plug in during day if needed.

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975 miles and 2/10ths a gallon of gas in 5 weeks. No problems, runs great and fun to drive. Used $23 of elect to date compared to $206 in gas I would have spent in my Bravada. I just can't see any downside to this car if your daily drive is 50 miles or less. Price of gas went up 20cents to $3.50 here in past week. I just smile as I go by.

Something for you to think about would be some sort of gasoline additive. Our lousy ethanol laced gas goes bad and will gum things up in just a few months. You are not using what is in your tank very fast. Either that or take a long trip every couple months to use up what is in your tank. Good luck with your Volt.

The Volt burns off old gas at the rate of about .3 gals every month or two so no need to add additives. Also, as far as the tax rebates, EVERYBODY or just about everybody gets them. If you own a farm, house, oil company, GE they are all given tax incentives. Dont blame the buyer of a EV car, blame Congress for allowing these plus MANY other tax breaks to a lot of people who dont need. Pres Bush started the tax incentives for ALL EV cars and it continues today. Plus think about all the oil money we are not sending to the Saudi who hate us. I didn't qualify for the $7500 rebate and still think the car is great. Many people lease and dont get the rebate. For me it is all about driving a nice car and saving money. Very little gas, time saved not filling up and no oil changes for 30 mos. 1300 miles and still at .2 gallons of gas. Fast, fun and very comfortable.

Nearly two years after the introduction of the path-breaking plug-in hybrid, GM is still losing as much as $49,000 on each Volt it builds, according to estimates provided to Reuters by industry analysts and manufacturing experts.

Cheap Volt lease offers meant to drive more customers to Chevy showrooms this summer may have pushed that loss even higher. There are some Americans paying just $5,050 to drive around for two years in a vehicle that cost as much as $89,000 to produce.

I have 6500 miles on my Volt, best car I ever owned. Averaging 46 miles per charge, 38 MPH on gas, 103 MPG on the computer. Evertime I blow by a d-wad in an F-1,2,350 obviously compesating for something God forgot to give them, I laugh till I cry.

We have nine solar PV arrays on roof and so we can send watts directly to Volt during day; the fit and finish of the Volt is beautiful. I've used 1.2 gals of gas and gone almost 200 miles. A great value; a great car.

Well, I hate to be a party pooper but if you went 5 weeks and used no gas, you probably could have gone with an EV rather than a hybrid. I've gone 3 months now and more than 1500 miles in my Mitsubishi iMiEV and bought NO GAS. It's the best.

If you live where it rarely gets hot or real cold you should be fine with your EV. The Leaf is showing premature loss of battery capacity in hot places like AZ and CA. Without solar panels here in CA our electricity is too expensive. How many miles are you getting on a full charge?

Not being a "party pooper" but you do point out why they make more than one flavor of Ice Cream. :-)

The Mits is a great little car, but every car is really just a "tool" (think of them as a hammer my kids hate that). What type of construction work you are doing determines which hammer you buy.

Although he was only driving to work for the last 5 weeks... does not mean that he might not need to drive his car to another state this week. The first two months my Volt was only used for local commuting where a pure EV would have worked fine... but then came the trip from Utah to Vegas, down to SoCal and then back to Utah. Now you could do that trip in an EV... but it would have taken a really long time waiting for all the re-charging...

Now that is a "silly" example, but just meant to illustrate a point. We all have slightly different needs so which tool is the "best," must be determined not by the choice someone else made, but rather by each individual. Personally I had planned on buying the Prius PHEV when it came out as I have owned 3 Prius vehicles and like each one. However, when I learned it only had 13 miles of EV range... I said "Ehh... what is that supposed to do." Did not make any sense for me... but it does qualify for the HOV lanes in California and elsewhere which probably makes it a great car for those folks. Then I moved on and was going to buy the Honda Fit EV. However, my disabled daughter who does not drive as much anymore needed a vehicle and I thought the Volt would be perfect for her. So I jumped the gun and ordered one (as it was going to take some time to get one from my local dealer). Then my daughter determined that she preferred the Malibu so Voila... I have a Volt :-)

My routine is to drive to and from work each day. I make side trips occasionally but nothing grand. My roundtrip commute is 36 miles. Each night when I come home I've used about half of the battery. I plug it into my standard 120V outlet and in the morning I'm ready to go. A full charge each morning leaves me with between 68 and 73 miles depending on how I drove it the day before. I've noticed, maybe, a 10% impact when I turn on the heat or the AC. I'm in New England. Winter is coming so I'll keep reporting back how the car is responding. Mitsubishi has been selling this car for years in Norway so I'm not expecting any show stoppers.